utkonos

I was reading this magazine in my childhood

The correct translation of name is not “technology OF youth” but “technology FOR youth”!

That’s not Volgograd, that’s Velikie Luki https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velikiye_Luki

The funniest thing is that Velikie is Russian for “great” and Luk is hipster westernized slang for “look”, so Velikie Luki is Great Looks city and this monument fits this well

Your transliteration is brilliant! And about soft sign, it should soften the previous letter (which should be always consonant). This means you are really not pronouncing this letter but this doesn’t means you can ignore it as it marks how you should pronounce the previous letter. You can copy that to google translator: спросит, спросить then click on the voice button and check the difference between those two words (they also have stress on a different syllables but that doesn’t matter at all in this case). First means “someone will ask” and second means “to ask”.